As a composer, I try to create works of quality and excellence. Works that are the result of high intentions, sincere effort, intellectual and intelligent direction, spiritual well-being and skillful execution. The works represent the wise choices from many timbres. I take risks, I dream big and I use humor in my works in different ways which helps to keep my optimistic views.
~ Dolores White
Biography.
Dolores White was born in Chicago, Illinois. She attended Howard University for two years and transferred to Oberlin College Conservatory of Music where she received the Bachelor degree in piano performance. She completed her M.M. in piano performance and composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Postgraduate work was at Ohio State University with Thomas Wells, briefly & Kent State University with James Waters, composition professors. Her music offers a unique way of listening and enjoying American Contemporary Music. Centered in American and European Classical elements, she fashions music that reaches into the rich resources of American traditions and music that draws on ethnic and international materials.
Dolores White has established herself as a strong voice in the burgeoning community of African-American composers. She is a member of the American Music Center, ASCAP, Delta Sigma Theta, The International Alliance for Women in Music, Cleveland Fortnightly Musical Club, the Cleveland Composers' Guild, the Cleveland Oberlin Alumni Club and the Ohio Music Teachers Association. She has conducted research on Afro-Cuban Music and Culture and given presentations on the topic at several Northeast Ohio Colleges and Universities.
She also belongs to the Shaker Heights Interest Group that has sponsored and provided scholarships to the Interlochen Arts Center in Traverse City, Michigan for high school and elementary students for fifteen years.
Dolores White was selected to participate in the June in Buffalo, New York Workshop/Conference in 2000 with Donald Erb, George Crumb, Bernard Rands, and Charles Wuorinen. In Spring of 2001, the Dallas Symphony performed her composition "Celebration" which was performed by earlier (1994) by the Detroit Symphony in recognition of her being selected as a finalist in the Detroit Symphony Composers Competition. She has several compositions on compact discs on the Albany Label. The latest CD (1998) is titled "New American Scene II: Five Distinguished African-American Composers," performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony with Edwin London conducting.
In May 2001, Mrs. White attended the Inter-American Conference on Black Music Research sponsored by the Center for Black Music Research and the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Society for American Music in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. She learned that three of her Art Songs will be included in "An Anthology of Art Songs by 20th Centery African American Composers" published by Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Press and "Twentieth Century Music for Piano and strings by Black Women Composers" by the Theodore Presser Company.
She was commissioned by the MasterWorks Chorale of Toledo, Ohio (2002-03) to write two short choral numbers for their December Series Program and her "String Quartet No. 1 in Three Movements" was performed on the Society of Composers Festival, in Guzetta Hall at the University of Akron in 2003. The Cleveland Fortnightly Musical Club and Cleveland Composers Guild commissioned her Chamber Ensemble composition for Four Clarinets and Violin for performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2003.
Dolores White Long Bio
